Bad Science, Worse Philosophy: the Quackery and Logic-Chopping of David Foster’s The Philosophical Scientists (2000)

Richard Carrier

Originally published in 1998 and revised in 2000.

T A B L E of C O N T E N T S:

1. Who is David Foster?
2. Some of Foster’s Strange Notions
3. Exercises in Self-Refutation
4. Why Foster Needs to Take a Basic Biology Course
5. Why Foster Needs to Take a Basic Statistics Course
6. Why Foster Needs to Take a Basic Physics Course
7. Why Foster Needs to Take a Basic Thermodynamics Course
8. Misrepresenting Darwinism
9. The Odds of Life Evolving by Chance
10. Foster’s Bizarre Redux of Platonism
    
11. Conclusion

A D D E N D A :

• EVOLUTION FROM SPACE AND OTHER BOOKS
  
  (comprehensive refutation of all attempts to calculate the improbability of life using statistics)
  
   
• THE FIRST LIFE
  
  (what scientists actually think about the origin of life)
  
   
• PRECEDENTS
  
  (reference to a proof of the possibility of evolution from random replication)
  
   
• ZERO ENTROPY
  
  (qualification on the possibility of zero entropy)
  
   
• HEMOGLOBIN PROTEIN SPECIFICITY
  
  (a correction of Foster’s assumptions)
  
   
• MICROBIAL REPLICATION
  
  (an example of the rate of single-cell reproduction)
  
   
• THE REALITY OF VIRAL EVOLUTION
  
  (some corrections of my assumptions about the T4)
  
   
• ENTROPY EXPLAINED
  
  (a survey of what entropy really is)